Books. Politics. Los Angeles. Food.
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Willy Blackmore
CONTACT
@willyblackmore willydotblackmoreatgmaildotcom
• Ask me anything
Willy Blackmore
Progressive Office: Version 1 (Williamsburg + Greenpoint)
Start at Blue Stove (Graham + Withers). Get a coffee and a baked good. ($5)
Work for however long you dare. Charge your computer.
Pack up and walk to No. 7 Sub (Manhattan b/w Java + Kent). Get a sandwich ($10)
Work using their wifi until your battery dies (no outlets).
Pack up and walk to Troost (Manhattan b/w Huron + Green). Get either another coffee ($2) or something else if you’ve had enough or a day (the michelada is good, $6). Sit on the pew when you first walk in. Outlets underneath.
This really should be a recurring Billfold column.
I’m often tempted to crop the food porn I have to shoot for work like this. Looks delicious, no?
“Last night, we had on-the-fly references to crypto-Christian hard rock band Creed, Spike Lee’s He Got Game soundtrack, Shawshank, food blogging, ironic(?) hipster racism, OKCupid, slap bracelets, AutoCorrect sexting SNAFU’s, compulsive brunching, artisanal Old-Fashioneds, Occupy fatigue, fake vegetarianism, Springsteen v. Mellencamp, Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks as the archetypal couple, not one but two a cappella performances of Deee-Lite’s “Groove is in the Heart,” and [Jenny McCarthy and Kurt Loder].”
Jill Lepore’s story about Campaigns, Inc. and the long, entrenched relationship between political consultancy and the battle against nationalized healthcare (on the right, that is) was fascinating. But the one thing I can’t reconcile is how Nixon went from being elected with the help of Whitaker and Baxter, and then proceeded to take a shot at a national health plan himself. He didn’t commit the cardinal sin of firing Campaigns, Inc., like Earl Warren did, but it seems that advocating for government-run health care as Republican would catch the ire of Whitaker and Baxter regardless. And if Nixon was able to propose, if not pass, nationalized healthcare without being ostracized by those in his party aligned with Campaigns, Inc.’s red-baiting attitude toward the issue, when did the concept become completely and utterly toxic in the GOP?
What do YOU think an Obama 2nd term would look like? Andrew Sullivan imagines a Reagan-esque return to the White House for the president in this week’s Newsweek - on newsstand Monday or iPad today - http://bit.ly/b4mv6q
Newsweek: Putting the Imagining Back in Journalism Since Whenever It Was That Tina Brown Took Over
Michael Pollan, Fascist?
When I started researching the story I wrote on The Futurist Cookbook, I thought dishes like chicken with ball bearings would give me chance to link industrial agriculture with Fascism. But it so happens that beyond the gonzo hyperbole of some sections in the cookbook, there’s sound nutritional advice—eat whole grains! Food should be grown locally! Consume more vegetables than meat!—that, in recent years, have been established as the oft-repeated advice and/or dogma of the local-foods movement. And if Food Rules is a rehashing of the argument made in a letter attributed to V.G. Pennino, a “leading columnist of the Gazzetta del Popolo,” included in Marinetti’s book, then perhaps it’s Michael Pollan who is the Fascist?
Pennino appears to be an extension of Marinetti, as the Gazzetta correspondent’s name only shows up in web searches in relationship to this article. But Marinetti is thoroughly entertaining as ranting nutritionist, somewhat due to the familiarity of his his argument:
We need to pull down other idols, uproot erroneous traditions: to affirm that white bread, for example, heavy and tasteless, is a useless food which forms an indigestible mass in the stomach and should be replaced by wholegrain bread, fragrant and substantial; that rice is a precious food, but only as long as it is not deprived of its organic qualities by polishing.
Pennino goes on, Pollan-like to the end, to suggest that the ideal Italian diet should be “three-quarters composed of the marvelous vegetable products for which we are envied throughout the world and a scant quarter of animal products.
In other words, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
